❝ Does being a Child of Hermes automatically make you good at flirting? Or was that just a skill you picked up? ❞
Andromeda Jackson knew she was not cut out for the demigod life, and that was before she heard about her death from the creepy oracle i...
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𝕴t should be noted that Annabeth and I do not share the same sense of humour. So, when we got lost a hundred feet into the tunnel and I started to laugh, she did not.
The tunnel looked nothing like the one Luke and I had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes ever ten feet. I shined a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but I couldn't see anything.
I finally managed to get my cackling under control as Annabeth tried her best to guide us. She had this idea that we should stick to the left wall.
"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."
Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. We found ourselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how we'd gotten there.
"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.
"Just turn around," Annabeth said.
We each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us could decide which way led back to camp.
"Left walls are mean," Tyson said as I nodded. "Which way now?"
Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as I could tell, they were identical. "That way," she said.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Deductive reasoning."
"Good enough for me."
The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to grey cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon we were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl.
Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"
"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.
"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"
We kept shuffling forward. Just when I was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish us, it opened into a huge room, that made my jaw drop. The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles, grimy and faded, but I could still make out the colours—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was my dad, Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. I'd seen the gods. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.
